Part One: Blue Birds, Red Birds, and Yellow Birds
This blog post is the first of a three part series that explores the arc of my relationship with reading from childhood to the present. As I was responding to the theme of our most recent Women Rowing North Writing group, Our Relationship with Books, it occurred to me that the way my relationship with reading has evolved over time is as significant as the books I choose to read. My dispositions as an early reader, like most readers, were influenced by factors beyond my interests and passions. I explore this in Part One.
When I started first grade, I ran to school each day with the gusto of an explorer and ran back home after school eager to regale my family with the stories of the day. On this one night I remember from the fall of 1963, it was just my mother and I at the dinner table.
“You know what?” I asked. “I am the best reader in the first grade.”
“Oh, and how do you know that?” my mother asked cautiously. I wasn’t really known for being the best at anything as a child, other than not being able to sit still…ever…anywhere.
“I know because I am the only kid in the class who reads with every reading group. I read with my group, the Blue Birds, then I read with the Red Birds, and I read with the Yellow Birds, too. I am Miss Corliss’s reading helper.”
I’m sure some of you suffered through those discriminatory groupings in school. In first grade, we were given colors to designate our reading levels. Blue Birds soared, Red Birds needed to land a lot, and the grouping of the Yellow Birds all but ensured they would be flightless. My mom offered me a puzzled congratulations and dinner went on. By the time the dishes were cleared and bedtime approached, I had scribble-scrabbled ten pages of coloring, given my doll a bath, cut her hair with mucilage-covered rounded scissors, moved the living room furniture to suit my play, changed the channels with a wrist snap that pulled the dial off every time, clomped up and down the stairs to get more “stuff,” and frantically done The Monkey to some song on the local radio station. I had done just about everything a kid could do by 7:30 except one thing – I never picked up a book.
I grew up pretty much as a non-reader. That’s not to say that I didn’t ever read, I just didn’t “choose” to read. I think several factors contributed to my non-reading era of childhood. Although my mother was an English teacher, there weren’t many books around the house. The only book I ever saw her read was the Bible. I don’t remember ever seeing my brother read, although he told me much later how much he loved reading the World Book Encyclopedia set my parents bought him for school. And my father was severely dyslexic, so reading was out for him. My mother brought home old discarded “readers” from school. They were full of old folk tales that I knew by heart. I did like to read from one frayed text as a comfort read. And there was a much loved little Rand McNally book, A Present for the Princess by Janie Lowe Paschall, that made me cry. It’s the story of a little blind boy who gives a princess a strawberry as a gift. But that’s about it. No bookcases full of books. No reading chair we took turns curling up in. If we wanted a story, my mother told us The Wee Wee Woman or Wyken, Blynken, and Nod. But perhaps the biggest reason followed me all through my elementary school years. Although I was a very efficient decoder (I was a Blue Bird after all), I just couldn’t sit still long enough to read more than a page or two. The words in the books didn’t move as fast as talking, singing, and real play.
Remember how I was the teacher’s reading helper? Turns out that had nothing to do with reading. It was because as a six year old I couldn’t sit still, tore around the classroom, and bothered the other children — nosing in their desks to see their treasures —balls, discarded Fig Newtons, little plastic dolls, marbles, and hunks of clay. That interested me so much more than Dick, Jane, Sally, Spot, and Puff. So Miss Corliss had me “read” with all the groups so she could keep an eye on me.
That restlessness showed itself in any kind of reading comprehension test, the kinds they would give us twice a year. I would skim the passages for key words to answer the boring questions. “What color was the man’s hat?” I’d color in the circle for red because apparently he had a dog named Big Red, but alas wore no hat – okay, so “none of the above.” Who cares? I just wanted to find a dog like Big Red to play with after school. Miraculously, none of the testing interfered with my privileged Blue Bird status.
Ah, but in the summer, I could satisfy the need to play and be active and discover some books in the process. During our summer breaks, I used to love to run (always ran) to the local library a few times a week. When it was hot and sunny outside, the library was cool. You could nose through the shelves without being scolded.I loved the picture books the most— just the right amount of vivid words and rich visual delights. I can clearly remember the day I discovered Dare Wright’s The Lonely Doll series with their pink gingham covers. The books are about an actual doll, Edith, who lives a rather privileged but lonely life, until she is befriended by two teddy bears, Mr. Bear and Little Bear. Together they had some amazing adventures, all depicted by Wright’s photographs. I took those books out of the library so many times. Over 50 years later, I happened to stumble upon them in a used book shop in Ithaca, New York. I bought two of them and lived that summer joy all over again.
In elementary school, the only book I can remember reading and loving was The Boxcar Children. I think I read it in second grade. The idea of little children living independently made quite an impression on me. When I was nine and in the fourth grade we moved. The idea of children living independently returned. I was pretty unhappy once we moved (actually everyone in the family was) and things began to fall apart. I made a plan in the spirit of The Boxcar Children. All I needed was an Easy Bake Oven, our red Coleman Cooler, and a staircase to the bedroom window, and I could live there as a nine year old completely on my own. Not surprisingly, I couldn’t get my mom to agree.
By the time I was in fifth grade, I had a bit more self-regulation, and the books our teachers read aloud were more interesting. Ironically, my mother was one of my teachers. She did share her love of The Secret Garden with her students, and I read the book on my own, loving it, too. Another read aloud that my mother shared with all the fifth graders was Loretta Mason Potts by Mary Chase. In the book, Colin Mason finds out he has a sister who has been sent away – an “awful, awful, bad, bad, girl—Loretta Mason Potts.” He sets out to find her and is introduced to a magical world where bad is good. That became my all time favorite children’s book. Clearly I was drawn to books that had mean, bully-like or struggling and troubled characters who were transformed through attention and love. This was my misfit kids era of reading. I felt like an outsider myself. It seemed I was always getting in trouble and with my “fattest kid in the class” designation, I could relate to not fitting in. Two other favorites of that era were Trouble After School by Jerrold Beim and My Brother Stevie by Eleanor Clymer. In fifth grade, I’d purchased those books to have for my own, each one a talisman. I’d like to say that the misfit era inspired me to read more. But in fifth grade I discovered a true passion in baseball, not books. Alas, most of my book orders were full of Peanuts and fangirl biographies of Roberto Clemente and The Pittsburgh Pirates.
If our arc as a reader is formed in childhood, was I doomed to a non-reader arc? As a child, I mostly eschewed sitting and reading for other indoor pastimes, nature play, dancing and jumping in front of fast moving black and white TV shows, and clomping my way into unfamiliar environments. Would I ever discover those same passions in books? Hmm, there is more to explore. I am grateful for parts of my “almost a non-reader” story as passions were discovered. And despite my childhood unwillingness to “sit still” without adult intervention, my first grade teacher must have seen something in my restlessness that signaled I was Blue Bird material, nonetheless, when it came to reading. Because who knew, underneath my purple scribble-scrabble and nosing through other kids’ desks, maybe there actually was a “best reader” hiding in there somewhere.
Join me next week for Part Two and details on a new GIVEAWAY !
